


A Scholar of Math and Magic

by Illyrias_Acolyte



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 05:11:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3755635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Illyrias_Acolyte/pseuds/Illyrias_Acolyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Keziah Mason is given a new task by her Master, and she finds herself recalling how she entered the service of Nyarlathotep. Rated for general Lovecraftian creepiness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Scholar of Math and Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sunchales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunchales/gifts).



The many nameless and formless things with which Keziah Mason consulted would drive a weaker human to tear his hair and gouge his eyes, but she remained undaunted by their presence. The towering Elder Things, six feet from their highest point to the ground on which they tread, inspired no fear within Keziah, who, despite her diminutive stature, was possessed of a colossal and curious spirit. Her dealings with the Things had prepared her well, for they had warred for countless numbers of insignificant human lifetimes against the Great Race of Yith, the shoggoths, and even the Old Ones themselves, and Keziah had learned, through her covenant with the Black Man, a great many things that put in context the vast and unknowable mysteries of the cosmos. 

It was on that knowledge she now counted as she stood at the podium before her Master, deathless Nyarlathotep, the Black Man, the Crawling Chaos. Years before, beyond number and beyond counting by her memory but surely a sliver of a sliver of her Master’s existence, the Black Pharaoh had come to the planet occupied by Keziah’s species, the humans, and consorted with them as a child consorts with her toys. He, for she referred to her Master as a ‘he’ despite Nyarlathotep transcending human weaknesses such as gender, helped or hindered the human race according to his fluctuating whims and the whims of the Outer Gods. Keziah often suspected that she was no different. However, the Black Man had use for her now, though what that use was remained unknown to her, and the extension of her mayfly life span and the blasphemous, eldritch knowledge with which her pact had gifted her was an effusive boon which Keziah did not care to turn down, so she chose not to utter protest. 

She knelt in supplication, her minute, insignificant form enveloped by the immense chaotic sensations emanating from her monstrous Master. The tenuous truce between the Elder Things and the Outer Gods was built upon Keziah’s doings, a newborn babe of an agreement Keziah herself had facilitated. Through her Master, and her blasphemous knowledge of sorcerous mathematics, the Outer Gods and the Elder Things had come to an understanding; the triple-star system in which dwelled the profane Elder Things was now the dominion of the Crawling Chaos. The weird and terrible creatures that inhabited the system would serve Nyarlathotep and the monstrous Outer Gods, or else face annihilation. In exchange, the old foes of the Elder Things, the vile shoggoths, would be eradicated personally by the Black Man himself. 

As was his custom, Nyarlathotep spoke without speaking, and Keziah understood him without hearing. The madness that allowed her to comprehend his wishes had long overtaken her mind, and Keziah had more than enough mental faculties to understand the hideous musings that emanated from his monstrous approximation of a mouth. Her orders were clear: a human mathematician by the name of Rebecca Carver had found her way towards the singular, sorcerous rift that allowed mortals to communicate with their betters, and she was to lead the mortal to the inhuman city of the Elder Things and show her the immense and repellent things contained within. 

Keziah was no stranger to this type of work. When the student of non-Euclidian geometry had discovered a similar rift in what the fear-filled Arkham residents had styled the Witch House, Keziah had lead him into the angles, through their path to the city of the Elder Things. The eldritch and terrifying evidence with which he had returned struck fear into the hearts of the superstitious people in the town, and he had been confined to an institution for the insane, a place in which Keziah had found herself in the not too distant past. When the Black Man had come for her in her dank, aberrant prison, she had little reason to avoid him. 

It had been many years since Keziah had discovered the forbidden sorcery shown to her by the Great Race that later humans had named “mathematics”, since she had been transferred into the vastly distant past to witness the singularly horrifying reptilian predators kept in cyclopean cages by the Yithians. Keziah had seen these monsters up close, scales and teeth and claws, and the Yithians, for her safety they said, did not allow her access to the unknowable and malevolent wilds outside. Keziah was contained in their great library at Pnakotus, and made liberal use of it during her time there. While the strange, alien creature roamed Salem wearing her skin, Keziah availed herself to their books in wicked and forbidden tongues. When she found tomes in her native language, she devoured them as a crocodile devours a deer, absorbing as much information as she could about their race and culture. The one book permitted in her household was the Holy Bible, though she had friends who spoke of a dark tome penned by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, which was shared with them in secret by the Devil himself. Keziah had no use for such a damned tome, and paid little heed to their insignificant yammerings. The chance to learn from these fearsome creatures - though fearsome they were, Keziah recalled the Angels of the Lord being equally terrifying and also warning their charges not to be afraid - was a chance that she would not let slip through her fingers.

Keziah spent much time in the libraries of the Great Race, greedily absorbing their arcane knowledge and alien ways. Her studies enlightened her to the malevolent experiments conducted by the Elder Things in eons past, their outlandish abortion of a project that indirectly lead, after millennia, to Keziah and the rest of the human race. A mutated shoggoth, a failed experiment with none of its abilities, resulted in a crawling, mewling abomination that hauled itself out of the ocean and onto dry land. This failure was the beginning of the mayflies that called themselves the human race. 

When Keziah was returned to her original, frail, human form, she resolved to use their knowledge for the betterment of her people. The knowledge she gained from the Yithians would far advance the pathetic human sciences of healing and medicine, and could extend life far beyond what they considered natural bounds. It was true that this information would delay the meeting with the Almighty, but wherein lay the harm of combining common plants into healing salves, and using them to combat sickness, especially when the embrace of the Heavenly Father was inevitable for all those who lived? In the eyes of God, all creatures were created equal, and the knowledge of the Great Race of Yith could only benefit mankind.

Unfortunately for her, the elders of Salem did not share her opinions. The unfamiliar angles and science she showed her neighbors and friends were denounced as satanic witchcraft, and Keziah found herself at the mercy of the church she had once held dear. They strapped her to a coarse wooden chair, dunked her in the cold pond until her lungs seared with fire, and forced out of her a confession to copulation with the devil that had never taken place. Before the end, she admitted to making a covenant with Lucifer, to signing a cursed Black Book, though she knew in her heart that she had done neither. Later, when the Black Man found her in her squalid cell and offered her his blood-filled pen to sign his horrible book, she knew he was not the Devil. Satan wanted her soul. The Black Man she would later grow to call Master simply wanted a partner, a friend, a lover. 

Keziah entered the angular rift and stepped out into the bedroom where Dr. Carver lay asleep. The good doctor lay next to her partner, snoring peacefully, entangled in the other woman’s arms. Brown Jenkin, the child created with the bone of her pinky finger, crawled from the recesses of the shapeless brown robe that had long since become part of Keziah’s body. He whispered in Keziah's ear, asking for guidance, and she bent down to allow him access to the floor. He scurried down her arm and across the floor, leaving tiny, phosphorescent footprints in his wake. Brown Jenkin, horrible Brown Jenkin, perched on Dr. Carver’s shoulder and began to speak in a low voice. 

Dr. Carver’s eyes shot open, and Keziah waited while the doctor, trapped between consciousness and the Stygian realm of Hypnos, snapped straight up without waking her paramour. She rose to her feet, silent as the grave, and it was then that she locked eyes with Keziah. The old crone extended a crooked finger towards Dr. Carver as the confused, sleeping mortal stood, and Keziah waved the finger towards the gaping hole in the wall behind her. Dr. Carver’s body resisted at first, but humans always bent to the will of Nyarlathotep, and Dr. Carver put one tentative foot in front of her. The good doctor eventually made her way towards the grinning Keziah, the old crone's arm outstretched arm bent and beckoning, eventually met with the doctor’s arm, and curled around it in friendship. Dr. Carver’s eyes flew open at this juncture, and Keziah watched as the good doctor took in the sight before her horrified eyes. Keziah knew well what it was to look into the unknowable and have it call out, and grinned a toothless grin towards Dr. Carver. Dr. Carver caught her gaze and held it for the briefest of moments before grinning herself in the mad fashion with which Keziah had become so familiar. 

The doctor’s gaze broke from Keziah and caught on the rifts behind the wrinkled crone, and she reached her free hand towards the strange and unknowable angles that had materialized in her bedroom. Their eyes met, and a knowing smile crept across the doctor’s face. Keziah would impart to her the eldritch knowledge which she no longer found terrifying, and they would reap the benefits of Nyarlathotep’s blessings together, and share in the knowledge and power of the great and terrible Elder Things. As Dr. Carver stepped through the blood-drawn angles and into realms unknown to her, Keziah saw on her face the same look of apprehensive wonder and curious terror that she herself had worn all those hundreds of years ago, when she was mundane. Dr. Carver would soon become like Keziah herself, a compatriot of the Crawling Chaos, a scholar of the Necronomicon, and they shall revel together in the resplendent opulence of the Black Pharaoh and his Elder Things until the end of time.


End file.
